Sherry Thomas Quotes

“I’ve always loved you,” he said, his eyes a blue that was almost violet. “You know this.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “I only wonder whether I deserve such devotion.”
“Sometimes people fall in love with those who do not return the same strength of feelings. It is as it is,” he said with a quiet intensity. “What I give, I give freely. You owe me nothing, not love, not friendship, not even obligation.”
― Sherry Thomas, Tempting the Bride

“Sometimes limbs must be re-broken to set properly, her heart too needed to shatter anew before it could truly heal.”
― Sherry Thomas, Not Quite a Husband

“Tenderness, that most alien and disconcerting of emotions, swelled and billowed in her. She picked up a cherry and stared down at the soft, bright-red fruit. “I love you.”
The last time she'd declared her love he'd thrown it right back in her face. She waited uncertainly for his response. She didn't even have to wait a second. He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. “I love you more.”

- Gigi and Camden”
― Sherry Thomas, Private Arrangements

“He glanced at her. “You were the moon of my existence; your moods dictated the tides of my heart.”

The tides of her own heart surged at his words, even though his words were nothing but lies.”
― Sherry Thomas, Not Quite a Husband

“He smiled at her. And it hit her like a mallet to the temple, the realization that she was in love with him. Stupidly, dreadfully in love with him.
Overnight, she'd become a fool.”
― Sherry Thomas, Private Arrangements

“The Castle. He’d seen this expression far too many times during their marriage. The Castle was Bryony drawing up the gates and retreating deep into the inner keep. And he’d always hated it. Marriage meant that you shared your goddamn castle. You didn’t leave your poor knight of a husband circling the walls trying to find a way in.”
― Sherry Thomas, Not Quite a Husband

“Outwardly, other than her hair, she had not changed much. She was still more or less the same cool, aloof woman who garnered more respect than affection. On the inside, however, it had been impossible to return to the person she used to be.”
― Sherry Thomas, Not Quite a Husband

“Her Leo, so bright, so beautiful.
And in the end, so catastrophically flawed.”
― Sherry Thomas, Not Quite a Husband

“Was it possible—was it at all possible that she could come out of her most desperate choice with a man as clever as Odysseus who looked like Achilles and made love like Paris…?”
― Sherry Thomas, His at Night

“He felt as if he stood at the very top of a high cliff. Take a step back and all was safe and familiar. But going forward required a singular leap of faith—and he was a man of little faith, particularly when it came to himself. But he wanted her to look at him again as if he were full of possibilities. As if they were full of possibilities.”
― Sherry Thomas, His at Night

“He was a god above her, powerful, beautiful, larger than life. The light brought out the latent gold of his hair. The shadows contoured the perfect form of his body. Light and shadows converged in his eyes, bright lust, dark anger, and something else. Something else entirely. She recognized it because she’d seen it in the mirror so many times: a bleak, austere loneliness.”
― Sherry Thomas, His at Night

“Her jaw dropped. She grabbed him by the shoulders. “I think I have formed an attachment to you. You know, what the English call a desire to have symphonic concerts with someone at all hours of the day?”
He smiled. “And I love you too, darling.”

-Lizzy and Will”
― Sherry Thomas, Delicious

“She touched him, placing her hand over his curled fingers, straightening them so that they were palm to palm, then she interlaced her fingers with his. Her fingertips were icy. A silent, dangerous thrill coursed through him. He wanted to pull her atop him and show her what awaited a foolish young woman who slipped into a man's bedroom in the dead of the night after having devoured him all evening with those dark, intense eyes of hers, setting his blood to simmer over three long hours.”
― Sherry Thomas, Private Arrangements

“Perhaps you forgave him too much, but who among us would not wish to be so generously loved and generously forgiven?”
― Sherry Thomas, Tempting the Bride

“He wanted to make cast models of her. He wanted to take a set of precision calipers and measure every distance between her features. He wanted her blood and glandular fluids analyzed by the finest chemists in the world—there must be something detectibly different in her inner workings for him to respond so dramatically, as if he’d been given a drug for which science had yet to find a name.
But more than anything, he wanted to—”
― Sherry Thomas, Beguiling the Beauty

“He felt like a pilgrim standing on the shores of Lake Sahara, having walked barefoot over hundreds of miles, yet all the hardships forgotten, filled with only wonder and reverence at the marvel of it all.”
― Sherry Thomas, Tempting the Bride

“That was how he would go on tormenting her, after his physical departure from her life. A baroque plan, byzantine even, a plan that both pleased and shamed him.
He awaited only the night, this one grotesque, terrible night.”
― Sherry Thomas, Private Arrangements

“Even they would think you a monster were you to
orchestrate a divorce right after my confinement.”
“How long do you recommend I wait, then?”
“A long time. I know what happens when a divorce is granted:
The woman never gets anything. And I will not be parted from my child.”
“So you will contest the divorce?”
“To my last penny. And then I’ll borrow from Fitz and Millie.”
“So we’ll be married ’til the end of time?”
“The sooner you accept it, the sooner we are all better off.”
His ancestors would have appreciated her hauteur: a fit wife for a de Montfort. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I must have enough rest.”
He gazed at her retreating back. Foolish woman, did she not realize that he’d already accepted it from the moment he’d said “I do”?”
― Sherry Thomas, Beguiling the Beauty

“This time he could no longer hold back his tears. And with them came words that he’d never been able to say to her his entire life. “I love you, Helena. I have always loved you. Wake up and let me prove it to you.”
― Sherry Thomas, Tempting the Bride

“He climbed into bed himself and kissed his way up her legs. Instincts she didn’t even know she possessed made her clench her thighs together. Without any hesitation, he pushed them apart, exposing her to his gaze.
“The doors of the temple, darling, never close to the devout acolyte.”
― Sherry Thomas, Tempting the Bride

“It was a few minutes before Helena could stop panting. She dared not read any further, or she’d crash through the connecting door and ravish Hastings—and she was far from sure how she felt about him.

-- As she was reading the manuscript of The Bride of Larkspear”
― Sherry Thomas, Tempting the Bride

“What is withdrawal?"

"Let's see, since you know your scripture so well, was that Onan? Yes, that bugger. What he did."

"Spilling his seed on the floor?"

"Yes," continued her husband, "it would be lovely if I could take you and spill my seed somewhere else. Not on the floor, mind you. But perhaps on your very soft belly. Perhaps even on your splendid breasts. and perhaps, if I'm in a really terrible mood, I'll make you swallow it.

- Vere to Elissande”
― Sherry Thomas, His at Night

“Do you think I should be paying my addresses to Mrs. Martin, my dear Miss Fitzhugh?” he whispered. “Martin doesn’t
look the sort to have enough stamina to service two women.
And goodness knows you could probably exhaust Casanova himself.”
Again this insinuation that she must be a sufferer of nymphomania. Behind her fan, she put her lips very close to his ear. “You’ve no idea, my Lord Hastings, the heated yearnings
that singe me at night, when I cannot have a man. My skin burns to be touched, my lips kissed, and my entire body passionately fondled.”
Hastings was mute, for once. He stared at her with something halfway between amusement and arousal.
She snapped shut her fan and rapped his fingers as hard as she could, watching with great satisfaction as he choked back a
yelp of pain.
“By anyone but you,” she said, and turned on her heels.”
― Sherry Thomas, Beguiling the Beauty

“The explanation for her absence had been staring him in the face all the while, but he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it: The affair meant nothing to her. He’d been the only one bewitched body and soul. For her, he’d been but a temporary source of entertainment, a way to pass the otherwise tedious hours in the middle of an ocean.
He’d been the one to press for a continuation of their affair beyond the voyage. He’d been the one to offer his heart, his hand, his every last secret. She never even gave her real name.
And, of course, never showed her face.”
― Sherry Thomas, Beguiling the Beauty

“For the next three seconds, he still dared to let himself hope.
Perhaps she was making a grand entrance. Perhaps she would be carried in like Cleopatra, hidden in a roll of fine carpet.
Perhaps—
Three porters, grunting, pulled in a handcart.
A crevasse opened before him and in fell his heart. No need to remove the tarpaulin wrapping. He recognized the stone slab
by its size and weight.
She had returned his present. She would have nothing more to do with him.”
― Sherry Thomas, Beguiling the Beauty

“...So far I have restrained myself. For how much longer, I do not know.
I have never known such happiness, shot through with such misery. Only four days have passed, they tell me. But that is not true. It has been decades since I saw
you last.
You will find me a stooped old man when we meet again. Perhaps I might even need a pair of spectacles to recognize your veil.
But I remain always,
Your servant,
C.

One of Christian's onesided letters to the Baroness”
― Sherry Thomas, Beguiling the Beauty

“She recognized the signs of danger. When she’d said to the duke that she had a certain effect on men, she hadn’t been exaggerating. It was not every man and it was not all the time, but when the effect happened, proposals flew like confetti and all parties involved usually ended up feeling quite mortified.”
― Sherry Thomas, Beguiling the Beauty

“The next minute he realized what had happened to him, but not before she’d caught him staring.
For a decade, I was fixated by her beauty. I wrote an entire article on the evolutionary significance of beauty as a rebuke to myself, that I, who understood the concepts so well, nevertheless could not escape the magnetic pull of one particular woman’s beauty.
She knew. With surgical precision, she had peeled back his layers of defenses, until his heart lay bare before her, all its shame and yearning exposed.
He could have lived with this if only he’d kept his secret whole and buried. But she knew. She knew.”
― Sherry Thomas, Beguiling the Beauty

“Her hand reached up and took a strand of his hair between her fingers. “Simple as that.”
She gently pulled on that curl and let it go. “It’s so springy.”
They’d barely grazed at the truth, but I she was satisfied—and distracted. By his hair, of all things.
“I feel like a sheep that has been overlooked during spring shearing,” he murmured.
“Yes, adorably fluffy.”
Another time he might have protested the use of that adjective. But now he was all too relieved. “Would you like me to pull my chair closer, so you may fondle my hair with greater ease?” he asked.
She beamed at him. “Why, yes, I’d like exactly that.”
― Sherry Thomas, Tempting the Bride

“The rediscovery of taste was as perilous as he'd feared it would be, rousing other dormant, dangerous longings for everything he did not have, everything he'd hoped to hold dear and could not.
Her, of course; her always.”
― Sherry Thomas, Delicious